


Look at Love

by Evandar



Category: Dracula Untold (2014)
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Female Friendship, Female Protagonist, Female-Centric, Past Lives, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 07:41:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5448650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evandar/pseuds/Evandar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mina falls when she meets Vlad. Strange memories dance just out of reach, and she swiftly becomes enchanted with her fairy tale prince - she just has to keep believing that he won't hurt her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Look at Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kajivar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kajivar/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! I really enjoyed writing for you, and I hope that you like your fic ~
> 
> The title of this story is also the title of the poem from which Vlad and Mirena's wedding vows came. _Look at Love_ was written by the 13th century Islamic scholar and mystic Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi. His poetry is very romantic and well worth a read.
> 
> Many thanks go to my beta for her work. Any remaining errors are my own.

“My lady? Where are you from?”

When she was a little girl, she would have delighted in this moment. A tall, dark, handsome stranger like the ones fortune tellers talk about, coming up to her and talking about flowers; greeting her as _“my lady”_ as if she’s something truly special. She delights in it now, to tell the truth, but she’s old enough now to start to turn away instead of sweeping into a curtsey.

Her princess obsession had always been stronger than the other girls’. She’s toned it down a lot over the years, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have butterflies in her belly. She’s already planning the things she’s going to tell Lucy about this at brunch when the sound of his voice stops her in her tracks.

“Why think separately of this life and the next when one is born from the last?”

He knows _Rumi_. She turns back. He’s watching her with dark, soulful eyes, and her heart skips. “That’s my favourite poem,” she says. 

He smiles back at her. _Really_ smiles, like the fairy tale prince of her childhood fantasies always did. He smiles at her like she’s the most perfect person in the world; like he’s missed her for centuries. It’s humbling. It makes her want to touch him, to try and make sense of this whole thing before he rips the world out from under her feet.

“It speaks to you of yearning,” he says, so confident that what he’s saying’s true – and it _is_ true, damn him – that she takes a step closer. And another. She’s smiling. She thinks she also might be falling. The ground doesn’t seem so real anymore.

…

It’s not often she’s able to shock Lucy, but this time she has. She hides her smile behind the rim of her coffee mug. Lucy just gapes at her – the toast on her fork drips egg yolk and hollandaise back onto her plate, but she seems oblivious.

 _“My lady?!”_ she squeaks. Her dark hair falls forward over her face as she shakes her head and laughs, and she drops her fork in favour of brushing it away again. “Where is he _from_?”

“Far away, so he said,” Mina tells her, shrugging. “He had an accent.” She can see the sudden doubt in Lucy’s eyes and she shakes her head. “His name’s Vlad, and he’s taking me to the opera tomorrow.”

Lucy’s mouth works silently. “Opera,” she says. “ _Opera_.” She says it like it’s a word she only barely understands. “How _old_ is he?”

It’s tempting to kick her under the table but she doesn’t. It’s a good question, actually. She shuts her eyes and tries to picture him, and she’s surprised by just how easy it is to do so. It’s almost like she’s known him a lifetime.

“Not too old,” she says eventually, thinking of the creases on his brow and around his eyes, “but I don’t think he’s had it easy.”

Lucy snorts and picks up her fork again. “Well, at least he sounds more interesting than Jonathan.”

Mina gives in and kicks her. Lucy yelps and laughs, and Mina laughs with her. Jonathan – sweet, steady, boring Jonathan – has been a point of contention between them for years. For the whole of their relationship, Lucy had been mad as a wet hen over how Mina was _obviously_ settling for someone so tragically dull, and while Mina had never been able to say that Jonathan had swept her off her feet, she’d always been a little bit offended on his behalf.

It wasn’t his fault that Lucy believed in Mina’s princess fantasies almost as much as Mina did herself.

“You need to go shopping,” Lucy tells her, and Mina is glad of the change of subject. Especially since a shopping trip is what she was angling for – fashion has always been Lucy’s passion. It’s her career now, but even when they were children, Lucy was the cool, well-dressed one.

She’s _still_ the cool, well-dressed one.

She’s also a little bit terrifying, and her wide, sharp-toothed smile is almost enough to make Mina wince. It’s _definitely_ enough to make her glad she’s already paid her rent.

…

Vlad’s expression when he sees her makes giving in to Lucy’s extravagance entirely worth it. His gaze sweeps over her, full of admiration and that same breath-taking longing she’d seen before. And if she’s a little pleased by the way he lingers over her neckline and the curve of her breasts, then that’s her business – Lucy’s approach to lingerie shopping is nothing short of traumatising at best, and she’s well within her rights to be pleased that she didn’t suffer for no reason.

“You are stunning, my lady,” he says, and his voice is rough with desire and something that might be awe. 

Mina laughs, and this time she gives in to the urge to curtsey. “You’re not so bad yourself,” she tells him. “My prince.”

She’s not sure why she called him that. For a moment, she thinks she’s surprised him as much as she’s surprised herself. _Something_ flashes behind his gaze, but it’s gone too quickly for her to know for certain. 

He offers his hand. He’s wearing gloves, just like he was last time, and the texture of fine leather under her fingers sends an unexpected thrill through her – the cool brush of his lips over her knuckles is even better. She wants to know what it would be like to kiss him properly, but she suspects she’ll have to work for it. He _is_ as oddly old-fashioned as Lucy accused him of being over their brunch.

She tucks her hand into the crook of his arm and strokes the soft velvet of his jacket, and she leans into him ever so slightly as he guides her to his car. It feels so _familiar_ to walk like this. It’s not… she’s never walked like this with anyone. Not even Jonathan had offered her his arm; he’d been the hand-holding type instead. But there’s something about it that her body recognises.

But there’s something not quite right. Vlad’s arm is cold. There’s no heat radiating from his body. It’s strange, but she shoves it to the back of her mind and forces herself to ignore it.

She won’t have this evening spoiled for anything.

It isn’t. It’s _perfect_. Uncannily perfect, that cynical side of her thinks. Vlad shouldn’t know her likes and dislikes half as intimately as he does, given that he only met her two days ago, but she can’t bring herself to care. He makes her laugh. He’s so gentlemanly that it almost hurts to witness.

He makes her feel like royalty. She gets so caught up in that feeling – in him – that it’s not until a late lunch with Lucy three months later that she realises that Vlad is as much of a mystery to her as he was when they first met. He speaks so sparingly of himself and so skilfully weaves discussions away from his life before their meeting that to realise that she barely knows him is devastating.

Especially since she’s sure she’s told him almost everything about her own life already.

“Are you sure he’s not hiding something?” Lucy asks. “Like, you know, a wife back in – where did you say he’s from?”

“I don’t know,” Mina admits. “He only told me it was a long way away.”

Lucy must see something in her face because she hails a waiter and orders a bottle of wine. Mina’s favourite Pinot Grigio – something Lucy would usually avoid – and her order triggers a spreading of warmth within Mina’s belly. There’s still someone out there who knows her better than Vlad does.

She tells her everything, and they sit for hours, picking over Mina’s memories of conversations that – at the time – seemed so precious and wonderful, but which now ring false. Lucy writes down what little she knows onto the back of a receipt. It’s a short list, and looking at it is galling.

She doesn’t even know his full name. Hell, even ‘Vlad’ could be a lie.

“You need to talk to him,” Lucy tells her. “You’ve been crazy about him since you first met, and I’m not going to pretend like this isn’t important to you, so I won’t tell you to ditch him. But you need to know these things, Mina.”

“I know,” she whispers. “I know.”

…

She doesn’t know where Vlad lives, and she doesn’t think that now is a good time to find out. When he offers, over the phone, to come to hers, she agrees for simplicity’s sake. She’s comfortable there, there’s security, and she’ll be heard if she has to scream.

She’s practically sick by the time she buzzes him up. When she opens the door, he’s holding flowers between them – white roses and lilies – like a kind of shield. It’s endearing, but it’s not going to change her mind.

She places them in a vase anyway. Once it’s done, she turns back to him. He’s staring out of her living room window, hands clasped behind his back. She can see the tension in his back and shoulders, and she has one of those strange, familiar urges to go to him and place kisses between his shoulder blades, right on the spot where his scars are the worst.

She blinks. She’s never seen Vlad’s back. For all that they’ve been dating for three months, they’ve never had sex. They’ve not even _kissed_. He’s never pushed for it, and she’s respected that distance. He’s never – of course – mentioned any reason why there _would_ be scars, but she knows in her bones that there _should_ be even though there won’t be.

She clears her throat. “Who are you?” she asks.

He looks back at her over his shoulder. He looks faintly incredulous, and anger sparks behind her sternum.

“You know who-“

“No I don’t,” she interrupts. “I don’t even know your full name. I don’t know where you’re from or what you do or if you have a family. I want to know. I do. But you just – you – you slither out of answering every time I try.”

There’s a long pause. She closes her eyes so that she doesn’t have to look at him – he seems so much more real than anything else in her flat. He’s so intense. Too intense. And whatever pull she has on him, she’s sure is gone. 

She doesn’t want to look at him so that she doesn’t have to see him leave.

“Dracula,” he says. She jumps, her eyes open, and he’s right in front of her. He’s completely in her space – so close that she can smell his cologne. Strange that she never smelled it when he was approaching, or heard his footsteps. “My name is Vlad Dracula. I am from Transylvania, though I spent a lot of time in Turkey while I was young.”

“That is far away,” she murmurs. Something…something is stirring in her memory. “Dracula,” she says. “It means…son of the dragon.”

His lips quirk into a smile. The lines around his eyes deepen, and she thinks she sees a flash of red in his pupils. “Or son of the devil,” he says, so quietly that she strains to hear it. He leans in, ever so slightly, and as much as she’s been craving his kisses, she places her hands on his chest to stop him.

He’s cold, despite the heating being on. His chest is hard and flat under her hands, and painfully still. It doesn’t rise with his breath – she can’t _hear_ him breathing, but he must be – nor does she feel his heart pounding beneath his skin. It’s like touching a statue.

She closes her eyes again and shivers.

“You know me,” he whispers. “You already know all the answers you seek.”

She doesn’t. She _can’t_. But in a strange way she _can_. She can remember dreaming of his face above her as she falls – of his long teeth bared in a snarl as he reaches for her. She can remember the sound of his voice speaking in a language she doesn’t speak and has never heard. But her memories slip away from her like smoke and his hands curl around her shoulders.

 _Son of the devil_. She can believe it.

His kiss is cold as death, but she allows it. She returns it, even, because she can’t imagine not knowing what his kisses taste like.

Strange, she thinks, that they taste the same. Strange that they don’t bring with them an epiphany about these memories she has of him or of previous lives. All the same, their eerie familiarity is calming. She _does_ know him, even if her list of questions goes largely unanswered. And above all – despite the fact that there’s a red glow bright in his eyes, and she still hasn’t felt his heart beat in his chest – she knows that whatever his secrets are, _he_ will never hurt her.


End file.
